131 Words
by Cryptic Nymph
Summary: 131 blank little words, bleak and austere on the flimsy grey newspaper. For Chelsea.  Oneshot, post Reichenbach, Sherlock/John or a passionate friendship, depending on how you look at it.


**For the prompt "Fading", inspired by something that happened to me today.**

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><p>131 blank little words, bleak and austere on the flimsy grey newspaper. Desolate little islands, surrounded by gaunt and sombre waters, seemingly caught between the mundanely insipid and the starkly exhilarating. Something like himself, John though vacantly, his mind feeling barren.<p>

131 blank little words was all Sherlock got in the paper, all he was worthy of. It was an idea so caustic to John that it burned his mouth even to talk of it, a sharp sting to his throat that made his eyes water. If they knew what Sherlock has done- _had_ done, he reminded himself- then surely they would feel differently. His triumphs, his failures, each more glorious and more intense than the idiotic hack that had wrote the damn thing had ever experienced. He had no idea who Sherlock was.

_"Sherlock Holmes, a private detective who lived in Central London, was last seen thirteen months ago near to the Reichenbach Building in Canary Wharf. The coroner declared an open verdict at his inquest."_

They didn't even get his damn job right. He was a _consulting_ detective, he corrected people about it enough. Surely they would have asked Mycroft or someone to get his fucking job right? Seeing Sherlock reduced to 131 words was a punch to the stomach, it winded him, made it hard to breathe. How could they diminish someone so wonderfully unfathomable into 131 words? Sherlock was the most complex of men, his many intricacies and quirks could not be explained to strangers in 131 words.

Even Sherlock could not write what Sherlock was if he was given a thousand words, if he was given the whole newspaper to write on. It was no less than Sherlock deserved- he deserved pages and pages of explanation, words merging together, the grey seas between them drying up and no longer becoming visible. Soon the pages would be filled with ink, a dark cavern of dusk contained in the thin sheets. Because one lifetime was not enough to explain Sherlock Holmes, no amount of time was.

They'd put his age in, and mentioned his loved ones. They spoke of Mycroft, and his mother, and even John- though he was simply referred to as "his flatmate". There was so much unnecessary detail- why spend valuable words telling them the coroner's name? That wasn't important; there were so many things they could have said. They could have mentioned the way his eyes changed colours in different lights, from grey to blue to green in the quickest of moments. They could have mentioned the way his eyebrows furrowed together when he was frustrated, or the beautiful music he played on his violin, or his brilliant, brilliant mind.

What did a reader know of Sherlock Holmes? They knew he was 34, and that he lived in a flat with another man in London. They knew that he had a brother. They knew he was presumed dead. But they didn't know that Sherlock accentuated everything around him- everything was more intense in his presence, everything was more real. The heightened reality which Sherlock and John had inhabited made every line sharper, every emotion stronger, and every colour brighter.

Without Sherlock there, John's world dissolved. There were no colours now, only black and white and grey, like the words in a newspaper. It wilted like a flower in the damp heat of the summer, perishing and diminishing. If life with Sherlock was an extreme, this was a pale comparison of it. And soon, even the words of the newspaper article began to fade, staining John's fingertips as he read and reread the same 131 words about a man who illuminate everything he touched.

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><p><strong>One of my closest friends at Primary School was called Holly. We knew each other for around 5 years, but we drifted apart when we went to separate Secondary Schools. Today, in the local newspaper, I found out that her sister was found dead in their home on Thursday. She was 13. <strong>

**This was for Holly, and her sister. **


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